


First Meetings

by skeletondust



Series: Final Fantasy XV: Moments In Time [3]
Category: Final Fantasy XV, Kingsglaive, Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Childhood Friends, First Meetings, Friendship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-22 07:30:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11962638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skeletondust/pseuds/skeletondust
Summary: A series of one-shots centering around the first meetings between various different characters. Stories are not in chronological order.





	First Meetings

Ignis tugged at the collar of his button-up shirt, trying to get it to feel less tight. If he didn’t know any better he would have claimed it was choking him. Choking would mean not being able to breathe, and he could breathe  _ just fine _ . It was just irritating. He hated irritating things. If only he could unbutton the top button…

“Ignis, stop fidgeting,” A proper voice reprimanded him. The six-year-old looked up at his father and dropped his hands to his sides. He knew better than to not do as his father said. The man peered down at him over the rim of his glasses. “What’s bothering you?”

“The collar’s too tight,” He responded, moving his hand to tug at it again, but dropping it again before he could reach.

The older Scientia kneeled down in front of his son and inspected the collar. Ignis stood as still as he possibly could, because he knew that his father knew what he was doing. The tie was quickly adjusted and the collar tugged on to cover the now looser article.

“There.” He rose back to his feet. “Better?”

The boy nodded.

“Good.” His father turned his attention back to the door of the sitting room they were waiting in, but not  _ sitting  _ in, for some reason.

Ignis was very tempted to sigh, but he knew better than to annoy his father on such a serious occasion. He didn’t entirely understand why it was so serious, though. He knew he was going to meet the prince. He knew he was going to grow up to be the prince’s adviser if the meeting went well. He also knew that it was very, very important to his father. What he didn’t know was why they had to dress up even more fancily than he had to for school or why  _ he  _ had to be the one to grow up to be the prince’s adviser. His father had explained to him that every good king needed someone behind him to give him advice on what to do, and it had to be someone who was  _ very  _ smart, and that Ignis was that person. But that didn’t make any sense. He knew he was smart but his cousins were smart, too, and most of them were older than him, so they were even smarter,  _ and  _ their father was King Regis’s adviser, so why weren’t they chosen to be the prince’s adviser? He did  _ not  _ like not understanding.

Before he was able to start pondering it over for the millionth time since yesterday and even before he could start fidgeting again, the same lady that had lead them to the sitting room opened the door and walked in again.

“The King will see you now, Count Scientia,” She announced. “If the two of you would follow me, please.”

She stepped aside and allowed them to exit the room first, Ignis trailing as closely behind his father as he could manage to while the man took long striding steps. She closed the door behind them and quickly made her way in front of them, leading the way down the long and winding hallways.

The walk wasn’t too long, but keeping up with the lady and his father was difficult for Ignis. He was still quite short, even for his age. His mother claimed he would catch up with everyone else as he got older. For now, he was stuck straggling behind the adults that refused to slow down to his pace.

They stopped in front of a large set of double doors. The lady knocked, and the doors opened on their own- or, at least, it looked like they did. Ignis knew better. There were people, most likely guards, on the other side that opened the doors for them.

Beyond the doors was a room with a long table. At the end of the table sat King Regis, a little boy sitting on his lap coloring in a coloring book. Ignis’s father walked to the closer end of the table and bowed. Ignis glanced at him and then copied him, keeping the bow as stiff and tight as he could. His father had told him about that, too.

“Oh, no need for formalities today!” Came the voice of the king.

His father stood up straight. So did Ignis, after glancing over again to see what he was doing.

“Of course, your highness.”

“Just Regis is fine,” The king- Regis insisted. He took the little boy off of his lap and sat him in the chair, and then walked towards Ignis and his father. “You and I are familiar enough to refer to each other by our given names, at least in these less formal situations.”

“I was under the impression that this  _ was  _ a formal situation,” Count Scientia responded. He followed it quickly with a smile. He was probably trying to cover up his nervousness.

“Well, I certainly can’t blame you for that. However, our sons  _ are _ just children.” That was when he looked down at Ignis. “And you must be his son. Ignis, correct?” He kneeled down to his eye level, like his father had done before to fix his tie and collar. Instead of that, Regis held out his right hand. Ignis looked down at it for a second before realizing what it was- a handshake. He took the king’s hand and shook it as was the proper thing to do.

“Yes, sir.” He looked up at his father briefly, who looked somewhere between terrified and relieved. Anyone else would barely be able to tell, but Ignis knew his father. He turned his attention back towards the king, who was rising back to his feet.

“Well, it is a pleasure to meet you, Ignis. Would you like to meet Noctis now?”

He looked back at his father again, who nodded at him, so he nodded to the king.

“Wonderful. He’s just over here.”

Regis placed a hand on Ignis’s shoulder and lead him towards the other end of the table. There sat Prince Noctis, on his knees in a chair too big for a three-year-old, his black hair and nice outfit already a mess. He was leaned over the table intently focused on coloring a cartoon picture of a cactuar purple.

“Noctis,” Regis said, gently pushing Ignis to stand next to the chair. “Say hello.”

“Hello,” said the little prince. He didn’t even look up from his picture. Ignis couldn’t help but frown. This wasn’t what he had been expecting. Well, he didn’t know what he had been expecting at all, but it wasn’t this. He was just like his cousin Celina. Maybe all three-year-olds were rude like that. Maybe they didn’t know better, unlike Ignis, but he wasn’t sure.

The king didn’t bat an eyelash. “Noctis. Do you remember what I told you about addressing those you meet?”

The boy pouted for a moment. He didn’t get out of the chair but he did put down his crayon down and leaned back, turned to look at Ignis.

“Hi.”

“Hello,” Ignis greeted. He didn’t hold out his hand. Did three-year-olds know how to shake hands? He couldn’t remember if he knew how to do that or not at that age.

“Tell him your name,” Regis carefully reminded him.

“Oh, yeah. My name’s Noctis. I’m the prince,” He announced, though his tone was oddly flat, as though he didn’t understand the meaning of what a prince was. Maybe Ignis was supposed to teach him.

“I’m Ignis.”

“Ignis? That’s a silly name.” His pronunciation of the name was notably slow and a little slurred, like he couldn’t figure out how to say it right.

Ignis pressed his lips together, tightly. “So is Noctis. That means  _ night _ . My name means fire.”

“I like nighttime. That’s when I get to sleep, like during naptime.”

Ignis raised an eyebrow. “Naptime? I don’t get a naptime.”

“That’s silly, too!”

The conversation ended when both boys’ attention was drawn by Regis’s laugh.

“Dad, that’s rude!” Noctis insisted.

Regis chuckled again. “Oh, my apologies. Now, boys.” He kneeled back down so he was on their level again. “I want you two to be friends. Noctis, Ignis is going to be your advisor one day.”

“What’s that?”

“It means he is going to help you figure out how to do things as the prince and later as the king, just like how Count Silas does for me.”

“That’s my uncle.” Ignis bit down on his lip, not meaning for the words to slip out like that. He waited for the reprimand that he got from his father and his teachers all the times he interrupted, but instead he just got a smile.

“Ignis,” Regis continued, addressing him personally. Ignis pressed his lips together again, suddenly feeling nervous. But Regis’s voice was calm and kind, and his words were the same. “You are a very intelligent young man. Your father and your teachers tell me you are what’s called a prodigy, that you learn very quickly, and that you are a fast thinking. This kind of thinker is exactly the kind a king needs. I am absolutely sure you will be wonderful in your position.”

So  _ that  _ was why he was chosen to be the adviser. He was a prodigy, whatever that meant. He marked the word down in his mind to look up in his dictionary later.

Now understanding, Ignis smiled at the king, and he smiled right back, rising once again to his feet. “I’m going to go speak with your father now. I do hope the two of you get along.”

Both boys watched as the king walked away, back towards Count Scientia. Ignis’s eyes lingered, amazed at how kind King Regis was. Now the only thing he didn’t understand was why his father had been so nervous for this meeting.

“Ignnnnnis.” His attention was brought back towards the prince. “That’s still silly. Can I call you Iggy?”

“Um.” He blinked, unsure. He had never had a nickname before, other than ‘four eyes’ by some of his older cousins for the glasses he had worn since he was practically a baby. But if that was what the prince wanted, he supposed it couldn’t be too horrible. “I gue- I suppose.”

“Okay. Then you can call me Noct.” Noct grabbed his crayon again and started coloring, much more furiously this time.

Ignis shifted uncomfortably. How was he supposed to become friends with him? “Why are you coloring it purple?”

“Because- because purple is pretty,” Noct responded, although his eyes remained on the picture.

“There are real purple cactuses,” He blurted, and bit his lip once again.

Noct’s eyes lit up immediately and he looked at Ignis with wonder. “Really?”

“Um, yes. They’re called, uh… prickly pears. I read about them in a book.”

“Yuck!” Noct stuck out his tongue. “I hate pears. They’re  _ slimy _ .”

“They’re not  _ real  _ pears.”

“Do you wanna color?”

Ignis blanked for a second at the sudden shift in conversation. That was enough for him to confirm that all three-year-olds behaved that way, since Celina was  _ exactly  _ that same. But then he smiled, and nodded. Noctis shifted over closer to the side of the chair, and Ignis took a seat next to him.

“You can color that.” He pointed to the page before the cactuar. This one had an uncolored chocobo, smiling out at him.

Ignis thought for a moment, humming to himself, before grabbing a blue crayon and beginning to color very carefully inside the lines of the smiling chocobo.

“Chocobos aren’t  _ blue _ ,” Noct scoffed.

“They can be,” Ignis replied calmly. “I saw one at the zoo when my mother took me for my birthday.”

“I wanna see a purple chocobo.”

“Maybe there’s one at the zoo.”

They were nearly finished coloring in every picture in the coloring book when Ignis’s father walked over and informed him it was time to go home. Ignis looked out the rows of windows that lined one of the walls of the room. The sun was starting to set. But they had come here  _ straight  _ from school! How was it so late already? He couldn’t stop the pout from forming on his lips.

“Now, Ignis-”

“Can I see you again tomorrow, Iggy?” Noctis asked, dropping his crayon again.

Ignis looked up at his father. “From now on, you will be dropped off here after school. King Regis insists that the two of you need to form a friendship.”

Both boys smiled and looked at each other.

Ignis was absolutely sure now that he was meant to be his adviser, if it meant they were going to be friends.

**Author's Note:**

> This first chapter was fun to write. I wasn't really in the mood to work on any other of the multitude of WIPs I have, so I started this new one. figuring this can be my fun stress relief one that I can just sit down and write for, and not entirely worry about the quality, length, etc.  
> I went with Ignis and Noctis as the first one to write because while we know they met at six and three respectively, I always wondered how that went, especially with Ignis being aware that wow, that's the prince, but he's literally just a baby.  
> Also, in case you were wondering about the grammatically incorrect style of writing, I was trying to make it sound similar to the train of thought/speech patterns of a six-year-old, and a six-year-old isn't going to understand all the ins-and-outs of grammar quite yet.  
> Anyway, thank you for reading!  
> ~Mel


End file.
